Why Is There a Press Chops?

When I was younger I always loved the 'Press Clips' column in the Village Voice. Crotchety dudes would muckrake through the media and destroy their enemies from within. Blunders, lies, cozy relationships, crookedness; journalists who were deemed guilty of any of these crimes and many others were mercilessly exposed and pilloried by the likes of the radical-left-leaning Alexander Cockburn, who often wrote as though he were wiping the bile off his mouth with his right hand as he typed with his left. I'm not saying that what happens in restaurant reviewing is as important as real journalists getting things right. Or...am I? With today's emphasis on 'sustainable' food, and the push (especially in the media) to change the way everyone in this country looks at the way we eat, maybe it is important enough to be taken seriously, and not sloughed off as mere insipid, genre writing. Or...is it? With this column, I'm going to take a look into the weekly shenanigans of our local food pimps, whip myself up into a righteous frenzy when I feel they've used their bully pulpits for naught, and give credit where credit is due when they get it right (just kidding-I'll leave the credit-giving to the rest of the sycophantic foodie tribe). And I promise that all words used in this column will be organic (at least according to USDA standards).